KEY POINTS:
Looking back on an expiring year is sometimes nostalgic, but not this time. It is hard to think of a national achievement of 2006, except for the trophies in the All Blacks' cabinet, and even they are mere preparations for the cup we most covet next year. But
in the more serious elements of national life the year will be remembered most for plumbing the depths of political indecency.
Don Brash started it, the Government said. He called Labour corrupt for financing the previous year's election pledge card from public funds. The Prime Minister, previously so adroit in her judgment, stuck to her spending rights despite the Auditor-General's verdict and the electorate's dismay. She was not corrupt, she said, and if Dr Brash continued to suggest so, her team would play rough too.
There was a book of emails. The next time the National leader mentioned the "pledge card affair" Labour suggested it was not the only affair that should concern him. Dr Brash announced marital difficulties but the public seemed forgiving. Helen Clark accused National of spreading equally scurrilous rumours about her husband. A Sunday newspaper splashed his picture in a celebratory election-night embrace. It was a strange year.
And just when it seemed the muck had settled it got stranger. Dr Brash obtained a blanket injunction against any publication of his stolen emails. Muckraker Nicky Hager announced he had written the book of emails but it did not concern the National leader's personal life. Since suppression of the Hager book was more damaging to him than its contents would be, Dr Brash was in a bind. If he lifted the injunction his private correspondence would be exposed. Resignation was his only course.
The country perhaps rests a little easier with him gone. His denial of Maori aspirations and his questioning this year of their blood quantum did not bode well for social harmony. His economic radicalism, well documented in the Hager book, would have been unwelcome and was probably past its time.
So we come to the end of 2006 with a Government tarnished by the pledge-card fiasco, and the National Party comfortably ahead in opinion polls but with a novice leader steering it back to the murky politics of the centre. Labour has two years to run and it wants to have the last word on election finance rules. Near-total public funding of politics portends.
Meanwhile, the national economy continued its "soft landing", a descent so long and gentle that it is perceptible only to statisticians. Companies and consumers hear the bearish predictions and largely ignore them, doing business as usual and borrowing against rising property values.
The Reserve Bank, grappling with inflation above its target all year, is no closer to resolving the dilemma that counter-inflationary interest rates attract foreign currency that boosts property inflation and keeps the dollar's foreign exchange rate higher than is good for our raw exports. Old problems, little progress.
No progress at all on the most important economic project for this country, the World Trade Organisation's Doha Round that promised so much for agriculture, and not much discernible effort to upgrade our products. Transformation, as the Government calls it, produced only a sudden proposition to put a rugby stadium on the Auckland waterfront. No thank you, said the citizens, and no progress marked 2006 even in preparations for hosting the Rugby World Cup.
A year to forget, then, on most fronts. A year without national or local elections or much resolution of any kind. Let it go tomorrow night without regrets and look forward to a new year with a World Cup in our sights, an America's Cup to excite us again, and surely now, a better tone to public life.